RSSJudge Blasts SCO for Lack of Evidence
By David Worthington | Published February 10, 2005, 8:11 PM
Today, a U.S. Federal judge berated Utah-based SCO group for failing to offer any "competent evidence" to substantiate its claims of that its controls the derivative works born out of UNIX System V. The statement came in a ruling brought on by a copyright infringement suit filed by SCO against IBM.
Despite being in agreement with the IBM's attorneys on the substance of the complaints, the judge rejected IBMs request to scrap key elements of the case.
SCO's legal crusade to protect its "trade secrets" began in 2003 when it claimed there had been a "misappropriation" of its code into Linux. Since that time, SCO has taken a large number of vendors to court including IBM, which it has sued for over $5 billion.
Major lawsuits have been filed against IBM, Red Hat, Novell, DaimlerChrysler, and AutoZone. The suits SCO filed against end-users are significant because they serve as a reminder of the ambiguity surrounding the use of open source software and its possible violation of proprietary intellectual property rights.
Leading open source advocates pointed to a Microsoft-SCO connection after Microsoft paid SCO to ensure compliance throughout its UNIX-related line of products.
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) which created the General Public License (GPL), a license commonly used in open source, is seeking to address those concerns with a revision of the GPL that tackles licensing and patent issues.
IBM has led the charge to defend its customers against lawsuits by establishing an endowment fund to help fund the defense of Linux customers and challenging SCO in court.
Today, the judge ruled that IBM's request to dismiss portions of the case was premature, but IBM vowed to fight on and seek another dismissal. SCO has stated that it will reveal more "secret" evidence in court; in the meantime, IBM will continue to gather its own evidence.
I don't know much about SCO, I've just heard they are filing false lawsuits. Really, who the heck is SCO? They are trying to sue "IBM, Red Hat, Novell, DaimlerChrysler, and AutoZone." That only confirms that they are sue happy to me.
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|You should follow the "SCO vs. The Planet" case on www.groklaw.net. Very interesting. :)
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|Why is this BS even allowed to take up court time. It should have been tossed long ago.
This is so typical of American business today.
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|Confirms? If you heard that SCO is sue happy somewhere then the source is sadly mistaken. Sue happy refers to a company that is big enough money wise to sue other companies into the dirt and allow them to establish a monopoly. (funny how little capitalism works isn't it :=) )
Nonetheless SCO is where the ownership rights to Unix ended up shortly before Linux came out making buying the rights a large waste of money. In an attempt to keep their Unix company alive SCO jumped on board and was forced to produce a near free operating *nix as well. They called it Caldera. However, other linux companies that had no other overhead to beat back soon shoved Caldera into the ground. When red hat had finally stolen the market SCO placed a law suit on the field hoping that because of the similarities in the *nixs they would find something too similar. With the money from the suit they hoped to keep their company alive. To this day they have failed to produce matching code.
The real irony in this is that when SCO was producing their Caldera linux they fully supported the open source linux editing network. When their linux failed they suddenly were against all their other linux buds claiming that they were the only ones who had the right to such code.
Not sue happy but dying... They are ust taking a really long time to do it. For the moment though that is good, puts more jobs out there...
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